Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: Episode 313
Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: A Selection of True Parents’ Speeches
Book 8: The Reunification of Korea and World Peace
Speech 02: May Our Homeland Shine Forth, pg 1159-1163
Korea, a nation chosen in the midst of suffering
The five thousand-year history of Korea has been full of troubles and trials. Korea was impoverished for a long time, and due to bitter harassment from foreign powers the Korean people knew the taste of tears and the taste of sorrow. Having gone through so many trials during their difficult history, the circumstances of the Korean people have been similar to God’s circumstances, as God lamented seeing fallen human beings, who, though His children, are as if dead.
The Korean people know the taste of tears. Therefore, they can understand the God of tears. It is not by accident that from ancient times the Korean people preferred tragic plays. This familiarity with tragedy is a qualification that allowed the Korean people to sympathize with the God who tasted tragedy through the Fall.
There is a proverb: “A widow knows another widow’s situation.” We have thought that God enjoyed power in joy and glory, but when we come to know God, we see that He is a miserable, lonely Parent who weeps over His lost children. God is seeking for us, believing that we will become the filial children who will console His heart.
From ancient times the Korean people were recognized as having a high standard of loyalty and filial piety. When I was invited to the May 16th Plaza for our Armed Forces Day this year, my heart was filled with pride when I saw the majestic presentation of our nation’s weaponry. As the soldiers marched past the reviewing stand and shouted the slogan, “Loyalty and Filial Piety,” I was deeply moved.
If we understand these words as the slogan shouted by the chosen people of God, they are revolutionary. I doubt there are any other soldiers in the world with a slogan like this. Koreans are destined to be the ultimate people who give loyalty and filial piety to God. This is why the spirit of loyalty and filial piety has become the central thought of the nation today.
The renowned examples of filial piety, fidelity, and loyalty such as a young girl’s filial love in the story Shim Chung, the faithfulness of Choonhyang for her husband, the loyalty of Chung Mong-ju to his king, and the patriotic martyrdom of the young Yu Gwan-soon are difficult to find anywhere else, in the East or in the West, in the past or the present. Yet these stories reflect the spirit of the Korean people.
This spirit of loyalty and filial piety, together with integrity, which is as steady as the evergreen and straight as bamboo, will become the backbone of the spirit and thought of the kingdom of heaven on earth to be established in the future. Since the kingdom of heaven is God’s nation, we have to give it our eternal loyalty, and since God is humankind’s Parent, we have to give our Parent eternal filial piety. God tested all the peoples of the earth, and He could not find a nation with the integrity and a spirit of loyalty and filial piety higher than Korea. Therefore, God chose Korea and came here.
Moreover, the Korean people, who tend to wear white clothes, love peace and maintain it. We are a nation that has never invaded another nation. It is like a miracle that the Korean people could maintain their love of peace and keep a pure history. This could be possible only through the protection of God. Expressing it in a slogan, we can say, “God is with our people.”
Throughout our five thousand-year-history, foreign nations have swallowed up our nation, but each time they suffered from indigestion. Each time they devoured us, they had to spit us out again. By whose power did this happen? It was God’s power. Who gave us our independence on August 15, 1945? It was God, by His power. What stopped the North Korean invasion during the Korean War? It was the power of God.
During the Korean War, if United States President Truman’s decision had been made even three days later, we would have been pushed into the sea at Pusan. Furthermore, if the Soviet Union had exercised its veto power in the United Nations Security Council, it would have been impossible to send UN troops here. But when the problem of sending troops to Korea was discussed, the Soviet representative was not present. At that moment, the plan to send in troops was being decided with complete consensus and at top speed. The Soviet representative did not participate at that very moment. Who made it so? It was God.
Carrying out a new movement of love
No one can touch Korea as long as God’s special protection is here. By God’s power, the powers that want to harm Korea are being broken down one by one. The recent defeat of Congressman Fraser, who sought to destroy Korea through the U.S. Congress, is a good example of this.
Ladies and gentlemen, God has protected our homeland Korea so that it can be the forerunner of a new era. Our long-endured difficulties have passed, and at last the day has come when we will step forward as leaders of this new era. However, the reason God called Korea is not to give life only to Korea; it is to save the whole world. Korea needs to realize that it has been called to the task of saving the world. Since God called us, we need to become kings and queens of love who can be the first to sacrifice ourselves for God’s task of bringing salvation to the world. To die for this holy task is to live, and to suffer for it is the way to glory. This is the meaning of Jesus’ words, “He who seeks to save his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matt. 10:39, 16:25)
Korea’s New Village (Sae-maul) Movement is a brilliant, monumental demonstration of self-reliance and revival. Such an achievement is without parallel in our history since the time of Tangun, the founder of Korea. There is no record of any other nation having such an achievement. The present industrial development of Korea surpasses even the reconstruction of Japan and Germany after the war. The fact of this rapid growth has great meaning, especially when it occurs at the same time as Kim Il Sung is probing, looking for any chance to attack the South.
The American people have tried to accuse me by saying that I have a close relationship with President Park Chung-hee, but in reality I never met President Park, not even once. It is not the way of a righteous person to refuse to recognize good acts for what they are. I firmly believe that President Park is a leader chosen by Heaven for this important era. I think that if it were not for him, it would be very difficult to endure the constant threat from Kim Il Sung, and the reconstruction of our homeland would not be possible.
There is a reason why God has helped our homeland develop very rapidly by raising up such a leader at this time in history. It is because the time has come for Korea to guide the world. We need to take a great leap into the world as the nation that is creating a new spiritual culture. To do so, Korea should shed its past image as a poor and humble place. God wants to send Korea as an ambassador to the world, but God cannot send an ambassador in dirty, ragged clothes. Rather, God wants to send our nation forth in full ceremonial dress. Korea needs to acquire the image of global leadership, both in name and in reality. Korea should become a model for the whole world, an object of admiration, which can be respected by others in every aspect. President Park is the person whom God has chosen in order to accomplish this task.
Korea’s New Village Movement ought to move ahead with the motto, “Let us live well,” and develop into a movement to make the whole world live well. Therefore, my initiative to develop the New Village Movement into the “New Mind Movement” is in line with God’s Will. Just as the New Village Movement is a movement to enable the body to live well, the New Mind Movement is a movement to enable the spirit to live well. The back-bone of this New Mind Movement is the spirit of loyalty and filial piety. If the New Mind Movement spreads throughout the world, the world will learn the true spirit of loyalty and filial piety from us.
However, this New Mind Movement has to progress to the next level. The movement that we ultimately should begin is the “New Love Movement.”
The focus of the New Love Movement will be to love God as our Parent and to love our neighbors as ourselves. The crown of love is sacrifice. The New Mind Movement has to develop into a movement that teaches how to sacrifice for God, the world, the nation and all fellow citizens.
This is Jesus’ ultimate teaching, but historically Christianity has always fallen short of accomplishing what I mean by this New Love Movement. Any movement that lives only for itself will inevitably fail, while any movement that is willing to die to let others live will remain eternally. Because the chosen people didn’t understand this, they rejected Jesus. Rome enjoyed prosperity during the ascendancy of Christianity, but when it became self-centered, even that great empire finally collapsed internally.
Let us build Korea into God’s homeland
God also once blessed England. There was a time when England’s power spread so widely over the earth that it was said that the sun never set on the British Empire. But when its global colonial policy began to center on itself, and England forgot the significance of the material blessing God had given it, England’s decline as a colonial power was as rapid as the falling leaves of autumn. It declined because it did not know the New Love Movement.
Today America’s power and blessings surpass those of the Roman Empire at its height. For two hundred years, the United States practiced well its equivalent of the New Village Movement and the New Mind Movement. But if in the Last Days the United States does not practice the New Love Movement, by which it willingly sacrifices for the world, its future will be grim.
Korea cannot be excused from this principle of God either. The New Love Movement is our ultimate way forward. If we are not burning with sacrificial love that is willing to sacrifice even ourselves and our nation to protect the world from communism and to help the whole world live well, we may be prosperous for a while, but we will eventually fall into the same trap and decline, just as the developed countries are declining today.
The Unification Church is now spreading this New Love Movement to more than 120 countries across the five oceans and six continents. God is working with this movement. Through this movement, people of the five races are becoming brothers and sisters in both name and reality. The homeland of the New Love Movement, which the Unification Church is leading, is our homeland, the Republic of Korea.
Shine forth, my beloved homeland! At last God has summoned you. You have become the homeland of the New Love Movement, which will save the world.
This is the testimony I offer to you this morning. Our Korean people’s most urgent task is to wake up. We need to wake up to the fact that God has summoned us. We need to wake up to the fact that we are the chosen people. We need to wake up to the fact that we have not been chosen just so we ourselves can live well, but so that we can help the whole world live well. When we wake up to this task, unite into one and accomplish this work, then God’s blessing will remain with our homeland forever. We will become the forerunners of the new age, as princes and princesses of God, and the glory of our homeland will be eternal and limitless.
Finally, I wish for endless blessings for you and your families, upon your personal lives, and for the Republic of Korea.
Thank you.
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